Wireless local area networks based on the 802.11 protocol include access points and stations that transmit several types of management frames. Management frames are used to provide information about the network and maintain communication standards between the networks' access points and stations. One of these management frames is the Beacon frame. Beacon frames contain information about the network and its capabilities. Some fields in a Beacon frame may include a timestamp, a Traffic Indicator Map, the Quality of Service, the system configuration, and the network capability.
The Beacon frame may be transmitted at set intervals to facilitate discovery of the network by new access points and stations. The Beacon frame may also serve to synchronize information between the access points and stations currently connected to the network. However, frequent transmission of the Beacon frame may cause a high overhead in the network transmissions. The Beacon frame may contain information that rarely changes, and frequent transmission of this information may be redundant and inefficient. Transmitting the Beacon frame at set intervals may also be inefficient as the interval cannot adapt to network conditions.